


The King of Larksturn Tomb

by rxdxctxd



Series: The King of Larksturn Tomb [1]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: 2nd person POV, Gen, Trans Male Character, aka the trans kid ging fic no one asked for but I’m giving you anyway, self discovery, trans stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxdxctxd/pseuds/rxdxctxd
Summary: A story about finding oneself in forests and comments and books about tombs.
Series: The King of Larksturn Tomb [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920238
Kudos: 12





	The King of Larksturn Tomb

**Author's Note:**

> Iala - pronounced Eye-la
> 
> I have DID and I’m a brand new alter that’s never written before so hopefully this came out alright.

Your name is Iala Freecss and you‘re down by the pier, watching as the fisherman haul fish from their boats and prepare to go back out for more. Your dark hair —Dad calls it black, but you’ve seen the brown shine in the sun and you’re sure he’s lying— is in a ratty mess around your shoulders. Granny had combed it out and tied it back this morning, but that was almost four hours ago —more? The big clock you could glimpse a ways away says it’s about noon, but you could have sworn it’d been longer. You’ve been all the way up to the upper island and all the way back, climbed to the top of at least six trees, broken your hair tie and fallen in the lake, swam out, dried off, and fallen in again. Your clothes are a mess and your hair is worse, and you’ll probably catch an earful when you finally got back home, but you‘re not sure what they expect of you, really.

You just turned seven this year and with it gained a dizzying amount of freedom and you’re drunk with your newfound power. Last year you still weren’t allowed to go out exploring alone. Too much danger, too many risks, what about this, what about that —but this year your mom and dad finally caved. Mostly because Granny had pointed out that your father was exploring the island when _he_ was your age, so why couldn’t you?

Because you’d make a mess of yourself, apparently. You tore your dress last week and Mom had a cow. 

Your eyes wander about the pier, watching people mill about, spying your father’s boat in the distance. You watch some boys by the boardwalk play jacks. One of them is as muddy as you are. He looks like he probably knows how to have fun, but he’s too old to want to play with someone like you and he’s a visitor anyway. He’d be gone in a couple of days. 

It’d be nice, you think, if any boys your age lived on Whale Island. A couple of girls did, and you’d tried playing with them, but....

You shudder. _That_ had not gone well. 

“Talk about incompatible interests!” your dad had laughed, completely in hysterics when you told them about it. He thought the whole thing was a riot. Secretly...you kind of did too. You feel bad about that though. 

\- - -

It’s another day, another adventure; another forest fashion disaster. Or: you fell into a large patch of brambles and nothing made it out unscathed. Granny was currently working on your hair, carefully removing bramble bits and combing out tangles.

“I should be paid for this.” she jokes. “Your father ought to owe me about a billion Jenny by now, with how often I fix your hair. We ought to chop it all off.”

A little light lit up in your chest when she said that. 

“Can we?” you ask without even pause to think. 

\- - -

Your hair has been cut. It’s short now like your dad’s, and people say you’re his spitting image. It makes you happy inside. You no longer wreck your hair every day of the week, and your grandma is happy for the decrease in work. Gradually, you stop wearing dresses outside the house —a shift so slow you weren’t actually aware of it. But it definitely occurred, and now you were seldom seen in anything but the plain shorts and shirts that your mother bought you in hopes you’d stop ruining your good clothes. 

“Well aren’t you a dapper little man!” 

The words were bellowed from your left as you were walking, and you looked to the sailor to your side. Suddenly, it clicked that he was talking to you.

“Me?” you say, pointing to your chest. A feeling like the giant beating wings of a moth filled your chest and you felt a feeling akin to getting caught doing something you weren’t supposed to. Should you say something?

“Well o’course, no other lads here walkin’. You fish, boy? Why don’t you come help me on the boat a bit?”

You don’t. You keep that to yourself and you follow the man onto his boat and feel the biggest rush you’ve ever felt in your life. A rush that you’d find wouldn’t leave, not for the day, week, month, or year. The feeling you felt that day would change you, and you didn’t yet know it.

\- - -

It‘s a night weeks later and you’re dressed up in your nightclothes, or at least, what you declared to be nightclothes. They were actually a pair of bloomers and a shirt, because neither hell nor high water could force you into your nightgowns anymore. 

You pull out your baby doll’s nightgown from the dresser where you also kept your own.

“Gotta get dressed for bed, Stella.” you say, undoing and pulling off her day dress to replace it with the gown. “I’m sorry you have to wear these. Maybe I can get Granny to make you some new clothes so that we can match again.”

You put Stella on your bed and her dress in the dresser and grab your book about the Lochean Province’s royal tombs and climb into bed with her. 

“What do you wanna hear about tonight, Stella?” you say as you pull the covers over your legs, looking at the table of contents of your book. You see the name for your _favorite_ one, and grin.

“The Larksturn Tomb? Good choice.”

You turn the pages of the book to the right page, finding it with ease from all the creases from folding its corners. You read this section so many times you could practically recite it. Nowadays, you only used the book for the pictures.

THE GREAT KING OF THE ROYAL LARKSTURN TOMBS

That was the title of the section. There were of course, many tombs in ancient Upper and Lower Larksturn. Many royal ones, too, each housing a king, their family, and their personal guard. Rulers weren’t sexed in the ancient Larksturns, which you thought was neat. Their genders weren’t known to their citizens and and it was taboo to say anything about it. You wished it was like that for you. If you had to hear someone call you a “cute little girl” again you might just snap. 

The king of this particular tomb, Ging Lafor’ceps III, was a boy according to the book —archaeologists could tell from the bones— but you wish that it didn’t say. It seemed mean. Or rude maybe?

He was your favorite king of the Larksturns for two reasons. The first was that he was a good one —Upper and Lower Larksturn were unified under his rule, and they had been divided and at odds for a few hundred years before he ruled. The other was....a bit more shallow.

His tomb _ruled_.

You had decided when you first read this book that you’d become a Hunter someday and it was because of his tomb. More great historical artefacts of the Larksturns came out of just his tomb than out of the tombs of the ten kings preceding him all combined. It was so well kept that old writings survived in it, and it was from those that the custom of not sexing kings was discovered! That knowledge alone put to rest a huge number of prior ideas about Larksturn rulers and revolutionised how archeologists studied them. And the treasure he was buried with! There weren’t a lot of photos in your book but you were committed to seeing it yourself someday. Then you were going to make lots of big discoveries yourself.

You finish reading the section to Stella and close your book, tucking it under your pillow and nestling yourself further under the covers. 

You wish you could be king someday. It’d be cool you think, if you were respected by everyone, if you had the power to do anything. If people weren’t allowed to call you a girl anymore. 

You wonder what it would have been like to be Ging Lafor’ceps III and drift off to sleep.

\- - -

“I’m telling you, I won’t do it!” you shout with a stomp. “I won’t!”

It was a few weeks later and your dad was at the bottom of the stairs with a dress in his hands and desperate look of bargaining on his face. 

“Iala, please, it’s only a day a week.”

“No!”

There was a new woman in town that had arrived on one of the latest boats and already she had become known in town as an etiquette teacher for young girls. You’d spied a small group of girls following her around two days ago and you wanted nothing to do with it. 

“Iala, I know you don’t like to wear dresses, but this is a good opportunity for you—“

You blow a raspberry at him and stomp back into your room to get dressed in something you’d actually wear. 

“Iala!” you hear him shout, followed by him trudging up the stairs. He tries your door and finds that you’ve locked it. “Iala. Please.”

“I won’t go!” you say again. “I won’t wear a dress and I won’t go to a girl school for girls!”

“It’s not a girl’s school for girls, it’s a ladies’ etiquette class.”

“Do boys go?”

“Uh, no, but—“

“Then it’s a girl school for girls!”

Your father takes a deep breath behind the door. 

“Iala, you are a girl, and you should—“

“No.”

“—and you should do this because it will be easier to learn while you’re younger.”

You slam your dresser drawer shut and open the bedroom door.

“No!” you say, your face all scrunched up. 

Your dad looks at you, and his expression changes. He tosses the dress on the bedroom floor and stands up, walking into your room and sitting down on the bed. 

“Okay.” he says. “I’m missing something. Let’s talk.”

A mix of fear and relief wash over you, and you take a seat beside him. 

“Why don’t you want to go? It’s not just the dresses, is it.”

You shake your head, but don’t offer an explanation. 

“What’s wrong with it being a girls’ class? You never used to mind being around the town girls.”

You bite your lip and look anywhere but at your father.

“If I go they’re gonna call me a girl.” you huff quietly. 

“The class?”

“The sailors. The class too.”

Your dad frowned. “What do the sailors call you now?”

“A boy. Lad. Young man, sometimes.”

Your dad fell silent and the moth-wings-beating-in-your-chest feeling reared its head as you grew scared. It felt like ages before he talked again.

He looked at you.

“You like that better?” he asked. He seemed genuine and he didn’t seem angry, so you give a shy nod. 

“Iala, you could have told me.” he says, and wraps his arms around you in a big hug. He squeezes you tight before releasing you. “You’re a boy, Iala?”

Your chest flutters.

“Can I be?”

He smiles. “You can be anything you want, Iala.” 

You smile warmly and bite at your lip.

“Do I...have to be ‘Iala’?”

Your dad chuckles and shakes his head. “Of course not. What would you rather be instead?”

\- - -

Your name is Ging Freecss and you‘re down by the pier, watching as the fisherman haul fish from their boats and prepare to go back out for more.


End file.
